


At Ruthven Barracks

by regshoe



Category: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Genre: Battle, Gen, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23823301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regshoe/pseuds/regshoe
Summary: An episode from the march of Prince Charles's army towards the Lowlands.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 6





	At Ruthven Barracks

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Luzula for beta reading and helping with historical details! Any remaining errors are my own. :)

It was the morning of the 29th of August 1745. On the previous day the army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart had gained the height of the Corryarrick Pass, having been somewhat surprised by the reports of their scouts that there was no one there to oppose their crossing it; thus undisturbed, they had made their way down the steep zigzags of General Wade's road on the far side, and continued along that road as far as Garvamore on the Spey. It was better fortune than even Charles himself in his bright optimism could have hoped for; and the military road, in a fine piece of irony, had given the rebel army an excellent marching route towards the goal that now lay open to them.

Ewen Cameron, as he breakfasted upon a bowl of oatmeal, had a little space of time to reflect on these developments. He was sitting on the ground outside the King's House, where the Prince and his senior officers were lodged, in the company of those of his men who had followed him here from Ardroy. Close beside him were Neil and Lachlan MacMartin, talking quietly together. The rest of the men for the most part ate their breakfast in contented silence; they had had a hard day's marching yesterday, and now made the most of what rest they had. Below them the dark waters of the Spey flowed restlessly beneath the bridge—another of Wade's unwitting gifts to them—while above and around them the hills were resplendent in blooming heather, beneath the sort of late summer sky which showed them to their best advantage.

'A fine sight, is it not?' said the man on Ewen's other side—one of his tenants, and now one of his command. 'It almost makes all of yesterday's marching worthwhile.' He sighed, and took another mouthful of oatmeal.

Ewen smiled. He was thinking of his own hills above Loch na h-Iolaire, which must surely look as lovely today, though far behind them. 'So it is,' he said, 'though we have many more miles ahead of us. I hope you are not tired of the pace already, Hector!'

Hector—who was in truth as stalwart and loyal a follower as the Prince could have wished for, and who complained more as a way of making conversation than out of any real dissatisfaction—merely grinned.

Ewen's mood, however, was not all so serene. He felt almost perversely resentful of the failure of General Cope and his army to make that contest for the Corryarrick which they had expected. It was ten days since the Prince's standard had been raised at Glenfinnan, and those who had rallied to that standard had as yet had no real chance to prove themselves in battle. A few skirmishes, and the resulting few captured parties of redcoats (some of whom, Ewen could not forget, had already escaped), were all very well; but they must do more than that if Prince Charles was to win the throne of Scotland for his father, and a victory over Cope's forces would have been a fitting jewel in the crown of their late success. Ewen could not help a certain impatient frustration that the chance had been denied them.

While he mused thus, Hector, keeping a more attentive eye on their surroundings, noticed before he did the figure walking steadily between the assembled Camerons towards them. 'To speak to you, Mac 'ic Ailein,' he said, indicating the man with his spoon.

Ewen raised his head—then, setting down his own breakfast, stood up hastily. 'Archie! What news?'

Dr Cameron greeted Ewen warmly, though his expression was grave. Indicating that he had matters of some importance to discuss, he led Ewen a little distance away from the gathered clansmen and told him of what had lately been decided at the Prince's council. In accordance with a scheme dreamt up by Gordon of Glenbucket, he said, Colonel O'Sullivan was to make an excursion to the barracks at Ruthven along the Spey; and Dr Cameron, with a party of his clansmen including Ewen's company, would accompany him.

'Old Glenbucket believes that Cope, in his flight, has left the barracks undefended,' explained Archie, 'and his idea is that we shall walk in and secure the weapons and supplies which he must have left there for our own use.'

Ewen nodded slowly. 'And are the barracks really undefended?'

Dr Cameron raised his eyebrows significantly. 'That,' he said, 'we shall see. Have your men ready to set off in half an hour.'

And so the company, numbering some four hundred men once O'Sullivan's party and the Camerons were combined, had another fine day's marching, seventeen miles down the rushing Spey. At last they halted in a patch of scrubby woodland close by the river, and waited here while O'Sullivan went forward to investigate. From the edge of the trees the barracks could be seen: a group of solid and imposing stone structures, built upon a hillock which rose abruptly from amongst the meadows of what was otherwise a flat piece of country, merely framed by the surrounding highlands.

Presently O'Sullivan returned, an expression of grim satisfaction on his features. 'It is as I suspected,' he said to Dr Cameron and Ewen. 'Glenbucket was wrong. There is a garrison.'

Ewen's pulse quickened. A poor substitute for Cope's entire force, doubtless—but they were to have their fight, after all!

'They are not many,' O'Sullivan continued, 'and I do not believe we shall have a very difficult task to overcome them; but it will require some attention to tactics.'

This attention he now gave it; and, a short while later, Ewen was relaying the Colonel's plan to the men who were to carry it out. O'Sullivan had followed up his reconnaissance of the barracks with a raid on the stable block, which stood a short distance away from the northwestern door and was undefended; his men had brought back a sturdy wooden barrel, a supply of hay and a tall ladder. O'Sullivan would take the main part of their force and, under cover of the stables, approach the northwestern door with the barrel filled with hay and set fire to it. Meanwhile a party of the Camerons, led by Dr Cameron and Ewen, would be approaching from the opposite direction, up the access ramp which led from the road to the southeast; they would use the ladder to scale the wall and gain entrance to the fortress.

'Aye,' said Hector, 'and we shall show them why Johnnie Cope ran away from us!' His companions cheered their approval, and Ewen smiled.

And so, while O'Sullivan led his men round to the northwestern corner of the barracks, the Camerons arranged themselves beneath the bank that ran along the road. Dr Cameron led them, with Ewen at the head of the group who were preparing to carry the ladder between them. From here the access ramp, a straight and rather dusty track, climbed up the mound towards the first forbidding stone wall. There followed a spell of almost eerie quietness, while the wind whispered amongst the long grass growing on the bank, and the mewing call of a solitary buzzard, circling in the bright sky high above, drifted down through the hot, still air towards the waiting Highlanders. Hector, standing ready beside the ladder, shielded his eyes with his hand as he looked up at the bird.

Then the silence was shattered by a violent commotion of shouting and musket-shots from the far side of the mound. O'Sullivan's men had been noticed. At a brisk order from Archie, the Camerons sprang into motion.

The first few paces up the access ramp were taken easily enough; but the path soon began to steepen, and the steps of the men who carried the ladder faltered. Ewen pressed his men forward up the ramp, all the while glancing between them and the top of the barracks—where, as he looked, a column of smoke began to rise from the far side. The fire had taken, then! The Camerons took heart at the sight and went onward with fresh energy.

A very short while later, however, there was another commotion, and the column of smoke was replaced by a thick cloud of steam, to the accompaniment of shouts from the men upon the walls of the barracks. Trying to keep his concentration on his immediate surroundings, for he could do nothing else to help the others, Ewen was aware of the sound of musket-shots—far too many of them, to his mind; were the defenders really so few as O'Sullivan had said?

Oh, but this ramp was far steeper than it had looked from the road! Again the men carrying the ladder stumbled. Ewen heard a muffled curse from Hector beside him.

'This way!' he said, for the other side of the track looked more promising than this. He looked up again at the grim stone edifice above them. Scarlet-clad figures were moving up there, shouting orders and reloading muskets. There was no sign of any more smoke. Thrown into a confusion by O'Sullivan's stratagem of the barrel they decidedly had not been—and that must mean that the time in which the Camerons might safely carry out their part of the plan was running out.

Hector and his companions were scarcely on their feet again when a musket-ball landed in the pale dust of the track behind them. Their time was up.

After that things descended into confusion. More musket-balls struck the ground around them. At one point Lachlan suddenly appeared from Ewen's right and gave him an abrupt and violent shove, to which he was about to respond with a baffled protest until he saw, bouncing down the ramp at his feet, what would certainly have struck his head had Lachlan not acted when he did. Meanwhile, more faces were appearing over the top of the wall above them. One of those heads was raised for a moment unwisely high above the parapet, and Neil, standing a few paces ahead of Ewen, took swift advantage of the error with his own musket; but this was not enough to turn the tide. Falling wounded one by one, the Camerons lost their hold on the ladder entirely.

At last a loud, clear voice—Archie's voice, sounding almost bizarre in such an unwonted setting—cut through the chaos. He was shouting an order to retreat.

They abandoned the ladder. Ewen gathered his men together as best he could and led them back down the ramp. Hector was slower than the others to give up his place; he stood for a moment gazing with a grim, thwarted look up towards the barracks, and Ewen called to him with an anxious impatience to join them.

But Hector had lingered too long. He had not half turned to start back down the track when he fell to the ground. The last of the redcoats' musket-balls had found its target.

There was no time to go back for him, even to ascertain whether he were only wounded. Most of the Camerons had already fled to the bottom of the slope; some of them, led by Archie, were making their way along the road, and Ewen was aware of Lachlan's gaze upon him from amongst the group who still waited at the foot of the ramp. All that he could do was to lead the rest of them down to safety.

*

The afternoon gave way to the cool gold of a Highland summer's evening, and the heather on the western hills added the light of sunset to its splendour. When the sun had sunk almost to the level of those distant hills, the Highlanders were allowed back to the barracks to retrieve their dead—six men in all—and to tend to those who had been too badly wounded to retreat with the rest. Dr Cameron was immediately busy about these, most of whom were still lying around the site of O'Sullivan's failed attempt upon the northwestern door; and so it was left to Ewen, accompanied as ever by the two MacMartins, to return to the access ramp and the scene of their own failure.

They found Hector lying sprawled above the foot of the ramp, a musket-ball through his head. There had never been any hope; it must have been instantaneous.

Ewen forgot his purpose for a moment in looking at him as he lay there. How odd that a man he had known all his life should have ended so, in a moment... The memory came unbidden to his mind of an occasion some eight or ten years before, when Neil MacMartin had taken his young foster-brother into the hills above Ardroy to hunt the deer; Hector had accompanied them, and his keen ardour for the hunt was just what it had been earlier that day, when he spoke of showing the redcoats why General Cope had run from their army.

But it had not been the imagined glorious battle against Cope's assembled forces that had killed Hector. Between the retreat and their return to the barracks Ewen had had plenty of time to think over the day's events, and the more he did so the more the simple shame of the thing burned at him. It had been ill-advised from the start—entirely unnecessary, for had they left the barracks alone they might have marched unopposed all the way to the Lowlands, and they would surely have found food and weapons enough elsewhere—and badly carried out. A simple pail of water had defeated O'Sullivan's plan of the fired barrel; and could he and his own clansmen not carry a ladder up a sloping track? In the calm of the evening, the access ramp seemed to have lost all the forbidding steepness which had been such an obstacle that afternoon.

Ewen looked again up at the high wall above him. There could not, he now knew, have been more than a dozen men there to defend it; so few, to prove themselves too many for four hundred Highlanders! He was forcibly and rather uncomfortably reminded of another occasion on which twelve men had achieved far more than they ought to have been capable of against an enemy who greatly outnumbered them.

Yes, it had been a shameful affair indeed... and for that, Hector was dead.

These thoughts were interrupted at last by the touch of a hand upon his shoulder.

'Come away, Ewen,' said Archie, quietly. 'The living have need enough of your care; do not give more time than you have to the dead.' He must have seen the expression on Ewen's face, for he continued, in a quieter tone, 'He knew what he was risking, the same as we all know. We shall mourn him properly when we have won what he offered up his life for; until then, there's no use in weeping over it.'

'No, of course,' said Ewen. 'I knew that. I did not think—it was only...'

But he could not quite say what it was only. With another look of sympathy, Archie left him and went to see to the remaining wounded. He sent the MacMartins back to help Ewen, and between them the three of them lifted up Hector's body and carried it away from the scene of defeat.

In the long sunset they buried him, along with those of O'Sullivan's men who had likewise fallen beneath the redcoats' fire. The air had taken on that slight chill which, for all the bright sunshine and brilliant heather of the last couple of days, will creep over the evenings towards the end of August. Ewen gathered his men together to head back towards the river, to the place where they were to spend the night before going to rejoin the Prince in the morning. As he led them away, his mind still turning upon the fortunes of the day in spite of himself, he remembered a scene from a few incredibly long days ago.

_'Mr Cameron, you gave me a warning yesterday, to which I should have done well to listen. I suppose it is too much to hope that, at this eleventh hour, you will listen to one from me?'_

He was no more inclined to let that warning sway his choices than he had been at the time; but, all the same, he remembered the sight of Hector lying still in the dirt of the ramp and thought that he knew rather better than he had then what the warning had meant.

*

Colonel O'Sullivan and the party of Camerons caught up with the main body of Prince Charles's army, now encamped at Dalwhinnie, the next day. Ewen was rather glad that it was Archie, along with O'Sullivan, who must report the outcome of their excursion to the Prince—and to Lochiel. He remained outside with the gathered ranks of the Camerons, sharing a bannock with Neil and Lachlan and gazing out over the dark waters of Loch Ericht. The sun was now hidden, and above the loch the clouds threatened rain. It seemed a hollow image of the scene of a day earlier.

And now another part of that scene repeated itself, for once again Dr Cameron appeared and made his way over to where Ewen sat. This time, however, he was accompanied by Lochiel, towards whom Ewen's anxious glance went at once; his expression was serious, but showed none of the displeasure or disappointment which Ewen had feared that he deserved.

'It is all done,' said Archie—whether he were referring to the task they had had in breaking the news of their defeat, or simply to the council's having taken a resolution for what the next move of the army was to be, it was difficult to tell. 'We are to head southwards today.'

And so once more there were preparations to be made for a march, and Ewen found his mood improving by gradual degrees in the busy whirl of activity. Once or twice he spoke briefly with Lochiel about their preparations; he was unable to say all that he wanted to, but that was perhaps for the best, for the chieftain seemed to agree with his brother that the events of yesterday were now put behind them. In any case, it was enough to know that Lochiel did not blame him—and evidently he did not. The Camerons as a whole were no more than a little cast down by the setback, and humming through the air around Ewen there was now talk of the Lowlands, of Perth, of Edinburgh... Their position was not so very much worse than it had been at the crossing of the Corryarrick, after all.

As the men formed into their ranks to begin the march—once again along a road built by General Wade—and Ewen took up his accustomed place behind Lochiel, he caught sight of the Prince, who was preparing to march on foot at the head of his army, as he always did. Charles's face was radiant with the young triumph of his cause, and he faced into the brisk wind that blew along Glen Truim with undaunted confidence. He turned to speak to the men near him; Ewen was too far away to catch the words, but the expressions of the Prince and of those whom he addressed made their general sense clear enough. It was impossible to be near him and to be downcast.

And so, as the columns began to move off along the road, Ewen took heart, as many a Jacobite did at the same sight in those bright days; and he took the first steps along the road to Edinburgh with no thought of any shadow of fate before him.

**Author's Note:**

> The attack on Ruthven Barracks is historical, as is Archibald Cameron's participation in it. I was inspired to write this fic after reading the account of it in Christopher Duffy's excellent book _The '45_ —if Archie was there, Ewen might plausibly have been, and I thought the idea had some interesting possibilities!
> 
> Keith's warning is quoted from the novel.


End file.
